Sunday discussion: Israel-Palestine -- How to resolve the conflict
Enforcement, not negotiations, is needed

Published 1:42 am, Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has turned that region into a dangerous and smoldering tinderbox that can flare up anytime, sucking into its vortex a number of world powers.

This conflict, which has been raging for years now, continues to decimate the Palestinian population, destroy their lands and infrastructure, drain Israel's economy and seriously strain relations between the US and its Arab allies and Muslim nations all over the world.

It is obviously in the interests of not only Israel and the Palestinians, but also the US and world at large to bring this conflict to an end.

And yet, though the quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians has been going on for generations now, a resolution of the dispute remains elusive.

The chief reason for this is that the Zionist leaders who control the government of Israel, though they pay lip service to peace and the two state solution, persist in their determination and efforts to establish Eretz Yisraeel on all of the land west of the Jordan River.

This was their intention when Zionism was born and this was the declared intention of the Israeli leaders when Israel was established in 1948.

There is ample documentation of the fact that Israeli leaders assured the Jews that the establishment of Israel was the first step to reclaim all of Palestine as it existed just prior to the creation of Israel.

In pursuance of this goal, Israel fired the fist shot in 1967, launched the war, invaded and captured the West Bank, The Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan Heights. Its dream of reclaiming all of Biblical Israel was realized.

Left to itself, Israel would not part with an inch of all this land. If it now talks of a two-state solution it is only because Israeli leaders realized, rather late in the day, that demograhics would pose a serious problem to their holding on to all the land.

Soon the Arab population would outstrip the Jewish population. Then Israel would cease to be Jewish or it would have to turn itself into an Apartheid State. This, they realized, was not feasible.

And hence the "commitment" to two states. But what Israel intends is to divest itself of as many Arabs as possible and corral them on small, disconnected pieces of land surrounded by Israel! And call this conglomeration of Bantustans the state of the Palestinians, the second state with which it will live in peace side by side.

This, clearly, the Palestinians cannot and will never accept.

All this talk of peace and the peace process is a farce, a façade to enable Israel to put more "facts on the ground" and consolidate its hold on the Palestinians.

Israel's refusal to meet the recent demand of the Obama administration to freeze all construction of settlements on Palestinian lands is stark proof of this.

Asking the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the "dispute" by bilateral negotiations is unrealistic and a grave injustice to the Palestinians. It is unbearably and obviously asymmetric.

Israel has, in defiance of a number of UN resolutions, continued to illegally occupy the Palestinian lands for more than 40 years now.

It has been the longest and most brutal occupation in current history. Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians, demolished their homes, devastated their cities and confiscated their lands.

It continues to humiliate Palestinians daily and make their life as miserable and impossible to live as possible. And all this in full view of the entire world.

This is not a "dispute" to be settled between two parties, but a case of aggression and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel.

The UN must live up to its responsibilities and take firm steps to bring an end to this illegal occupation.

If it cannot, then the nations of the world that believe in justice and in the rule of law must start bringing pressure on Israel, through boycott, divestment and sanctions, to let the Palestinians establish an independent, sovereign, contiguous and viable state on a mere 22 percent of the land they enjoyed prior to the establishment of Israel.

That is all that the Palestinians want. Surely that is not too much to ask for.